Elon Musk He was working illegally on a student visa and feared being “deported” when he started life in the United States, an explosive report revealed on Saturday.

The South African-born billionaire immigrant also admitted in an email that he “had no legal right to remain in the country” when he dropped out of college and founded a company that he later sold for more than 300 million dollars. The Washington Post reported. His brother was also here illegally, committing what one expert called “entry fraud.”

The revelation comes after Musk, the CEO of Tesla, X, SpaceX and Starlink, went all out to support Donald Trump and has repeatedly accused Democrats of trying to flood the country with immigrants crossing the border illegally, a conspiracy theory that has become common within the Republican Party. Bloomberg called it “X’s biggest promotion of anti-immigrant conspiracies.”

His ally Trump is advocating mass deportation millions of undocumented migrants. The former president also denounced “chain migration”.

But The post office Detailed reporting on Musk’s immigration journey shows that the world’s richest man abused his student visa to found his first company, Global Link Information Network, which became Zip2. Investors were so concerned that he might be “deported” that they sought advice from an immigration lawyer.

Musk was born in South Africa and, at the age of 18, obtained Canadian citizenship through his Canadian-born mother, Maye. He first studied in Canada, then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, which granted him a student visa.

In 1995, he moved to Palo Alto where he had a place at Stanford University, which would have given him another student visa. Student visas give their holders the right to work part-time to support their studies.

But The post office revealed that Musk never registered, which would have invalidated his student visa. Instead, he worked on his start-up. Dropping out of school to work, even if technically unpaid, is simply illegal, Leon Fresco, a former Justice Department immigration lawyer, told the newspaper.

“If you’re doing something that helps facilitate revenue generation, like design code or trying to make sales in an effort to generate revenue, then you’re in trouble,” Fresco said.

Musk said he recruited his brother to help run the company. But Kimbal said he actively lied to border agents, once being refused entry at an airport on the grounds that he was working illegally in the United States while trying to return after visiting their mother in Canada . He asked a friend to drive him across the border and lied that they were going to see David Letterman’s show so he could do whatever he wanted. he described in an interview with journalist Graham Bensinger as a critical meeting with investors.

“It’s entry fraud,” said Ira Kurzban, former president and general counsel of American Immigration Lawyers. The post office. “That would make him inadmissible and permanently excluded from the United States,” he said, unless sanctions are lifted. Additionally, hiring someone without the legal right to work in the United States is a federal crime.

The Musks’ illegal status so worried one investor, Mohr Davidow Ventures, that when in 1996 he invested $3 million in the company, the deal included a clause giving the brothers and a third party 45 days to obtain legal status.

Derek Proudian, who was on the board of Zip2 and later became CEO, said The post office the investor sentiment was: “We don’t want our founder to be forced out.” He added: “Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a business in the United States. »

Another investor told the newspaper anonymously: “Perhaps naively, we never checked whether he was a legal citizen. »

The Post reported that the lawyer used by the company told the two men not to tell the whole truth about their “leadership” roles and to erase their resumes of U.S. addresses.

Zip2 was sold to Compaq in 1999 for $305 million, with Musk earning $22 million. The company set him on a path that saw him become CEO of PayPal, which led to his involvement with Tesla and the creation of SpaceX. It is currently worth $274 billion, according to Forbes. He became a U.S. citizen in 2002. False statements about his prior immigration status on a citizenship application are illegal and may be grounds for revocation. It is unclear whether Musk made false statements.

In 2005, in an email to Tesla’s co-founders and submitted to a California court, Musk wrote of his studies at Stanford: “I actually didn’t really like the degree, but I didn’t have any money for a laboratory and no money. legal right to stay in the country, so this seemed like a good way to solve both problems.

In 2013, the Musk brothers appeared on a panel at the Miliken Institute conference, where Kimball said they were “illegal immigrants,” and Musk jumped in to say he was a “gray area”.

The Beast reached out to Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, for comment. The post office said he, Musk and the head of Musk’s family office did not respond to their request for comment.